Big man on campus: Dungy was a quarterback at the University of Minnesota, 1973-76, and two-time team MVP.

Earned ring: Converted to safety, Dungy made the Pittsburgh Steelers as a free agent in 1977. In a game against Houston as a rookie when he also played "emergency" quarterback, he threw and made interceptions. He played in the Steelers' 1978 Super Bowl win against the Dallas Cowboys, then was traded twice over two years -- to the San Francisco 49ers and New York Giants.

NFL dues: Started his coaching as an assistant at his alma mater in 1980, then became the NFL's youngest assistant with the Steelers at 25. Before being named Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach in 1996, he was Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator and Kansas City Chiefs defensive backs coach. He joined the Colts in 2002.

Reversed current: Dungy took the Bucs to the playoffs in four of his six seasons; in 1999 he produced their first division title in 18 years. They lost at least 10 games in 12 of the 13 seasons before his arrival.

This thought resonates as Tony Dungy sits in a golf cart following a recent training camp practice and opens a window to his soul.

He is healing, yet the pain remains as he knew it would. It has been eight months since Dungy, the highly respected Indianapolis Colts head coach, and his family began to endure the most unimaginable of tragedies. James, 18, the oldest son of Dungy and his wife, Lauren, hanged himself in a Lutz, Fla., apartment.

"It's human nature to grieve, and you're going to have some pain," Dungy says. "But then the choice is how you handle the pain. You can choose to go on and fight through it, or you can choose to succumb to it.

"You can't make the feeling go away. There's no Novocain or anything that can just take it away. You begin to realize that you can still function, you can still move forward."

Dungy, 50, is a very public representative of a distinct class of victims.

He experienced the suicide of a loved one.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 30,000 people in the USA take their lives each year — one every 17 minutes. It is the 11th-ranked cause of death, with a rate higher than homicide.

Psychologists say that while each individual survivor handles the loss uniquely, each typically endures a range of emotions that includes levels of guilt, embarrassment and even rage. And there is the inevitable question: Why?

"It's probably something I won't come to grips with," Dungy says of his son's death. "But what it forces you to do is live in the present.

"It's hard to do, but that's what you have to do. You have to program yourself to live in the present. Make the present as good as you can make it.

"Because you can't count on the future, and you can't go back and redo the past."

A deeply religious man, Dungy sees his situation as a reflection of God's will. He is reluctant to comment publicly on James' death and the aftermath. He insists he does not want to be the subject of stories that detract from the mission of his football team.

The Dungys have daughters Tiara and Jade and sons Eric and Jordan and are in the process of trying to adopt an infant boy, Justin. Dungy also is concerned about intrusions into his family's privacy, leery of adding stress.

Yet as a Christian in a high-profile position, Dungy believes that in some ways he was chosen to extract a positive from tragedy. He says he was pleased to receive a letter from an organ donor organization informing him that James' corneas were used to help two people achieve eyesight.

"One thing I've learned from this: I'll bet you I've talked to over 200 people in the same situation," Dungy says. "They're going through the same things; it's just that thousands of people don't know about it. On the one hand, it tells you you're not in this by yourself. There are a lot of people making it through. On the other hand, if you can share your feelings and say some things, it probably is going to help a lot of people."

Dungy always has been about helping others, his strong sense of community evident by an extensive record of supporting worthy causes. He raises money to fund college scholarships for underprivileged children, frequently speaks to faith-based groups and has worked with prison ministries and foster-parent organizations, among others.

He is an everyman in the NFL coaching fraternity, perhaps the one over the years who has been most comfortable discussing social issues as much as football.

Young get 'conflicted messages'

Through tragedy, his views have added context.

"I think young people are struggling with their identity," Dungy says. "What really makes them tick? What's important to them? We're getting a lot of conflicted messages.

"That's one thing that we, as a society, have to get across to our young guys: How are you going to be defined? Are you defined by being successful at work? By being an All-American or a Pro Bowler? Is that what makes us, or is it something different? Hopefully, we can get across to them that it's something different. It's what you are internally."

At his son's memorial service, where witnesses described Dungy as a pillar of strength and grace, he delivered an emotional eulogy. Dungy urged parents to hug their kids more, express love and cherish their relationships.

Reminded of that message during an interview between camp practices, he said: "We all think, 'I've got a 5-year-old, and I'm going to have him for 13 years, and when he's 18, he's going to college. I'm going to have this amount of time with him.'

"I guess what this whole thing has taught me is not to take that special time for granted. Don't assume you're going to have that. Really enjoy every day with them, make them feel like ... they're really special."

Coping for Dungy includes plunging back into his job with a passion. He's trying to guide the talent-rich Colts across the threshold that separates the very good from Super Bowl champions.

The Colts are the only NFL team to qualify for the playoffs in each of the past four seasons, but they have ended each campaign with a heartbreaking loss short of their goal. Last season, they flirted with a perfect season — starting 13-0 before losing for the first time four days before James' death Dec. 22.

Despite finishing the 2005 regular season 14-2 and earning the top seed for the AFC playoffs, the Colts lost their postseason opener in dramatic fashion to the eventual Super Bowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers. The final minutes included a goal-line fumble by usually sure-handed Steelers star Jerome Bettis, an improbable tackle by Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger that probably saved a touchdown on the return, and a missed 46-yard field goal try by usually reliable Mike Vanderjagt that could have forced overtime.

Players and others with the team insist emotions that enveloped the team with the tragedy had no bearing on the manner in which their title hopes were squashed.

"How much that took away from the single-minded focus that you used to have (in order) to play the way you need to play to go as far as you want to go, no one will ever answer," Colts President Bill Polian says. "And I'm not going to ponder it."

The 21-18 loss to the Steelers was the latest case in which the Colts — and Dungy, their coach for a fifth season — couldn't win the big one.

With a 102-58 career regular-season record, Dungy has the second-best winning percentage (.638) among active coaches after Washington Redskins Hall of Famer Joe Gibbs. Since the AFL-NFL merger in 1970, only former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry and ex-Steelers icon Chuck Noll — for whom Dungy once played safety and under whom he broke into the NFL coaching ranks — have produced more consecutive playoff berths than Dungy's current streak of seven.

Yet including his six-year tenure with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Dungy is 5-8 in the postseason.

"It always bothers you when you don't win (the Super Bowl), and you're always looking for ways to improve and be better down the stretch," Dungy says. "But realistically, you chase the Super Bowl every year."

Peyton Manning, the Colts' all-pro quarterback, says that as mindful as he is of the tragedy his coach is coping with, he does not sense a difference in how Dungy is running the team this year.

"I've never liked it when somebody asks how somebody else is feeling," Manning says. "You don't know. All I know is he has jumped right back into this team with a great attitude, like he always did."

Dungy, known for a consistent, even-keeled demeanor, says the intense demands of his job have been therapeutic. When he is evaluating talent, devising strategy and addressing other team issues against the backdrop of the NFL calendar — the Colts open the regular season Sept. 10 against the New York Giants, whose quarterback is Manning's younger brother Eli — it forces him to stay in the present.

"When I'm on vacation and you have time off, your mind has more time to think about the past and different things," he says. "That's when it becomes tougher."

NFL teams operate under regimented schedules, and coaches seem to have a universal trait for wanting to control the environment. They often speak of minimizing distractions, from outside influences or internal dust-ups. But Dungy has found that no amount of training — he's in his 29th year in the NFL as a player or coach — can deprogram him from human emotions.

So there are always reminders, even on the practice field.

"This is the first time I've been at camp by myself in about 14 years," says Dungy, who was previously accompanied by James and/or Eric, now 14 and playing high school football. "Eric, they're in two-a-days and that whole thing. Not having one of those guys at the lunch table was different."

Return to work seemed natural

In many regards, Dungy says the tragedy affirmed that he approached his life and career the right way. For years, he has preached to players that faith and family came before football. He chases his assistants away from the office at night, insisting they spend the time at home.

"I'm sure I'm different in a lot of ways, but I'd like to think I'm the same coach," Dungy says. "If anything, it's kind of made me care a little bit more about our players and their personal side of things. ... I just see a lot of those guys as, you know, five years older than my son. And a lot of the things that he was going through, I'm sure guys are going through the same things."

Told that Dungy thinks he will be more sensitive to players' issues, Polian says, "How would you know? He always was, anyway."

Dungy briefly contemplated whether to return as he sorted through his life in the aftermath of his son's death. After last season, he told Colts owner Jim Irsay he expected he would be back but wanted to get a sense of his natural reactions over a period of time. One of the considerations was how he would be able to handle the attention he would receive because of the tragedy. Irsay and Polian told him to take all the time he needed, even if that extended to the late spring. "Had he not come back," Polian says, "I'm not so sure I would have, either."

But Dungy knew it was in him to continue coaching when he began to set his offseason schedule and think of ways to improve the squad through the draft. It was the same type of itch to move to the next season that had been there before.

"If it had been a drudgery or my mind was distracted and I couldn't really focus in on the things I had to do," Dungy says, "then I would have thought it was time to go."

'Greatest man I've ever met'

Count Arizona Cardinals running back Edgerrin James, who left the Colts this year as a free agent after seven seasons, among those who see immense value in Dungy's decision to continue.

"The league needs him bad," James says.

James says Dungy's principles and the example he sets have a value that exceeds what he offers in terms of wins and losses.

Before joining the Colts, Dungy transformed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from a perennial doormat to a repeat playoff qualifier. But he was fired in early 2002 after a 31-9 loss to the Eagles in Philadelphia marked the Bucs' third consecutive playoff loss.

"At the funeral, do you know who he thanked?" James says. "He thanked the owner of the Tampa Bay team (Malcolm Glazer). This is the guy who let him go. That's letting you know, 'It's cool. I'm not sweating stuff.' That stood out. Through all that drama ... he put that past him.

"He thanked the dude for everything he had done for his son."

James adds, "Whether I'm playing on his team or not, he's forever my coach."

That's typical of the effect Dungy has had on his players. Oakland Raiders defensive tackle Warren Sapp, who played nine seasons for Tampa Bay, calls Dungy "the greatest man I've ever met in my life."

Sapp used to live three doors from Dungy in Tampa. Dungy's oldest daughter babysat for the Sapps and the Dungy boys were often at his house playing video games.

Even so, Sapp still wasn't sure what to expect when he glanced at the program for James' memorial and saw Dungy was to deliver the eulogy.

"I'm thinking, 'There's no way,' " Sapp says. "But he got up there and laughed, cried and talked. It just left more of a stamp on me. You stand up like that, and you're burying your son? C'mon. That just shows what the man is made of."

"It's human nature to grieve, and you're going to have some pain," says Colts coach Tony Dungy, who lost his son to suicide. "But then the choice is how you handle the pain. You can choose to go on and fight through it, or you can choose to succumb to it."